


Aversions

by WhumpTown



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Drug Use, Gen, Graphic Description, Gun Violence, Hurt Aaron Hotchner, Self-Harm, Stabbing, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Notes, Whump, of stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27584630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhumpTown/pseuds/WhumpTown
Summary: Hotch is less than dealing with the events post foyet's attack
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner & David Rossi, Aaron Hotchner & Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner & Emily Prentiss, Aaron Hotchner & Haley Hotchner, Aaron Hotchner & Jack Hotchner, Aaron Hotchner & Jennifer "JJ" Jareau, Aaron Hotchner & Spencer Reid, Aaron Hotchner & The BAU Team, Penelope Garcia & Aaron Hotchner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	Aversions

**_“You cannot save people, you can only love them.” --Anais Nin_ **

Aaron Hotchner has never been good with words. Not the right ones, anyway.

But actions can speak louder than words.

He’ll spin Garcia around the dance floor when they go out for drinks. Hands placed just where they should be and he’ll laugh softly when she makes a thinly-veiled dirty joke. And she’ll remember those nights for her whole life. The way he smiled at her as the lights shimmered overhead. The way he blushed when she refused to dance with anyone else, stating she needed a _real_ gentleman.

There are nights at Dave’s. Weekends that he gets to keep Jack, uninterrupted by cases, and they go to visit Pop’s; Jack’s third favorite person (mommy and daddy of course being one and two). It’s the sound of Jack’s happy feet running up and down the hall, Hotch’s thundering voice as he he-ho-hums and chases him along. Dave watching the youth bleed into that scrawny, spunky recruit from some twenty years ago. And Jack always runs into Dave’s arms and in one fell-sweep proclaims him the only safety he can get from his daddy. His giggling face turned into Dave’s shoulder as he shouts, “get him Pops, get him!”

Those memories were just weeks ago.

It’s been two weeks since Dave’s house was filled with Jack and Hotch, smiling and happy and… fuck just healthy.

Aaron Hotchner wakes up dizzy and sore. The pain ebbing into the numb, dull ache of whatever’s being steadily fed into the line disappearing into the pale flesh of his hand. For a moment, he just watches the ceiling spin. An all too familiar sinking feeling in the pit of his gut. Anxiety spreading its claws out to take root but he… he can’t seem to remember why.

Realization floods his chilled limbs with a shudder, the memories hitting his sternum. He leans his head back into the pillows, limp and stiff and cold and so fucking hot-- The stiff tug of the stitches in his abdomen force him to come to an altogether too swift descent. There’s a hissing sound that comes before his right-hand aches, something cold and heavy spreading up his arm and into his chest.

“Good to see you awake,” a nurse greets.

He’s too far gone to say anything.

By the time Emily finds him, he’s had one minor run-in with the staff. A doctor stops Emily in the hall, her tone laced with annoyance and apprehension that bleeds into her threat to restrain Hotch if that becomes necessary. Emily leaves with a nod and promises to keep an eye on him but she leaves with this tight bundle of uncertainty forming in her chest.

He wakes as she settles down in the visitor’s chair.

The stitches along his hip are tight, leaving him immobile despite his foggy brain wanting nothing more than to curl onto his side and sleep just a little longer. But the scent of the antiseptics burn his nose and he can still feel Foyet--

_The tip of the knife slowly dragging down his chest. There’s no threat of a scratch or blemish out of place. Aaron’s breathing having long ago turned ragged and shallow. “Have you ever read the reports,” Foyet asks, keeping his slow purposeful movement going. “Tell me, Aaron, have you read what David Rossi and Jason Gideon had to say about you? Young Aaron…”  
Foyet smirks as he stops, shifting as he presses weight into the stab. It’s slow and agonizing but, Hotch realizes with a shudder, he’s too cold and weak to even really feel it. His body slowly falling away._

_“Not so young anymore,” Foyet comments. He takes a moment to watch the knife’s slow pull from Hotch’s body, smiling when Hotch’s chest catches and he falls silent and breathless. Not even the sound of his ragged wheezes filling the air. “I can see how they’re right, you know?” Foyet lays the knife down on the side, pulling himself up and away from Hotch. “I wonder what’s going to get you killed faster, your loyalty, or your stubbornness?”  
His eyes peel open slowly. Uncoordinated and sluggish he raises his left hand to scratch at the dried blood on the side of his face. His fingers manage to clumsy hook the canal running his nose and he pulls it crooked on his face._

Her voice quiet, afraid any sudden movement from her or too sudden a loud sound, might startle him, she calls his name. “Hotch,” she rises from the chair. She hates how her voice wavers. The shift that takes place between them. Any semblance of friendship they might have must be cast aside because… he’s a material witness and a victim. One that she can set off. One she might break.

Stepping into his field of vision, she can see his shoulders relax. Just having someone else close. Someone he knows. “You…” she’s stuck between Emily and Prentiss. Between her role as his friend and his coworker and even her role as an agent. But he’s always commended her undercover work. She’s got a spark for thinking on her feet. “I’m going to fix the oxygen canal, okay? It’s going to agitate your skin otherwise.”

Through slow, coordinated, and purposeful movements she keeps her hands where his darting bloodshot eyes can see. She hesitates when he sucks in a panicked breath but something in the back of her mind says pausing is only going to make it worse so she pulls the canal into place. Her fingers just hardly graze his cheek but she can still his body flinch at the contact.

And all she can think is _fuck_.

“That’s better, huh?” Her eyes dart to the heart monitor, uncertain if she’s convinced herself that it’s beating erratically fast or if it’s just a fragment of her mind. More than anything else, she makes herself aware of her body. The way that she moves so as not to startle him or, as she’s quickly putting together, touch him.

She steps back to the side, fully aware of the way that his eyes don’t break away from her. “Get some sleep, boss.” There’s something familiar and light about the way she calls him that and she can only pray that gets them through.

He suspects that he’s finally gone and done it. A part of him is relieved to find that fourteen-year-old Aaron Hotchner, a boy clutching to life with bloodied hands, was so wrong. The flash of heat and the open sting of his father’s belt against his back isn’t what finally makes him snap. Forces and pries his tight hold from reality. It’s nine, precise stab wounds and an awful cocktail of drugs that he can’t see his way out of. That’s what breaks him. Then again, it’s so much more than that.

Derek Morgan. His dark blue shirt fitted tightly over his back, the edge of the back tucked into his black pants. Tight muscles shifting under his skin as he stands with his back facing Hotch. His tattoos, body art Hotch had never really cared to mind, staring back at him now. Those tattoos are the only sensible thing about the world as his body is pulled back down.

He blinks owlishly at JJ. Her cold, tiny hand squeezing his and trying so valiantly to get him to talk to her. A question, something pressing, something important but he can’t…

Garcia with her tear-stained cheeks and the mascara running down her cheeks in pools. She says his name, he doesn’t hear but he sees her mouth form the word. He thinks that she might sit by his side and read. He’s got the faintest in and outs of The Hunger Games plot stuck in his brain.

There’s a fuzzy, half memory of Reid. Even in the present, he’s not sure it’s actually happening. A hallucination, maybe, but as he’s looking the young genius over he’s not sure why he’d hallucinate Reid. Then again, who else is left? There’s this look in his eyes, it makes Hotch feel guilty. Wrong. He doesn’t dwell on that feeling for very long. One sluggish blink later and he’s gone… maybe he was a hallucination.

Somewhere between hugging Jack and Dave standing in the doorway to his room, Hotch feels a very deep, uncomfortable weight settle across his chest. A realization on the tip of his tongue-- he wishes that Foyet had just killed him.

Waking with only the weak light of the hall outside, he realizes that he has no idea how much time has passed. Days or hours or even time. Just that the room is dark and there’s a light glow from the machines behind him. The morphine’s going to kill him. He needs to be more alert but the edges of the world are blurry and he’s already succumbing to the warm sting spreading over his body.

His hips ache and he makes the mistake of shifting. It’s just a small movement, sleepy and hazed he’s not capable of too much more. Still, his body is on fire.

“Careful,” Emily whispers from the dark.

He can see her, out of the very corner of his eye, rustling as she moves out from under the mountain of a blanket and uncurls her legs. He watches, silent, as those legs seem to go on forever. Reality melting into the heat of his body, the flames licking up him. And her touch is the water he so desperately craves but he’s lost his sense. There is no up or down or reprieve from the heat.

“Easy,” she breathes across him, the flames succumbing to her. To her will. “Just breath.”

He’s sinking back under the haze, mouth full of cotton and jaw slacked open but he can’t find the words. He can’t seem to remember how to speak. “Prentiss,” he rasps, eyes sliding shut but his hand closes around hers. Begging, pleading that she understands.

“I’m right here,” she promises. “Sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

A week later, she finds him tripping over himself he’s so drunk. Making a mess of himself and everything around him but… that’s all he’s ever been good for anyway. She doesn’t say anything. There isn’t any disappointment in her eyes, despite what he’s expecting.

Haley always hated seeing him drunk. He gets sloppy.

Where Haley had seen only Mr. Hotchner, a broken old bastard, in her husband, Emily just sees a man begging for normalcy. For the pain to numb and for things to return to normal.

Emily just takes the bottle out of his hand. Taking a chug out of the bitter, dark liquid she grunts as she swallows. It burns and she supposed that’s half of the appeal to him. “Come watch the History channel with me,” she says, taking his hand and guiding him to the couch. He goes easily. She knows he likes the History channel and she also knows that he just needs some stability. Something solid. So she leans into his side and holds his hand. Reminds him that he’s not as alone as he thinks that he is.

But even that’s not enough.

“Hotch! Hotch, that’s enough! He’s dead, man,” Morgan falls to his knees, pulling Hotch from Foyet’s body. “He’s dead.”

Emily watches Hotch’s trembling body. The split skin of his knuckles and the way that two of his fingers crookedly bend into his palm. Rough ragged sobs tear through the room, breathless words passing Hotch’s lips. He’s shaking uncontrollably. She watches, his bowed back, snap. His attention, that hawk-like, eerie attention, is moved. It’s changed.

He pulls himself from Morgan’s arms.

Morgan having drawn Hotch to his chest. Bent their bodies to mold them into a folded backward hug. Their heads pressed together. Morgan can’t help his own tears. The abject horror washing over his body at the sight of the mess before him. Great arching sprays of blood and the thick scent of blood looming over them. And George Foyet… a blooded lifeless body before them.

And Hotch…

He stumbles to his feet, pulling his body from where he’d fallen into Morgan. Where he’d allowed himself just a moment's embrace. He takes three, four large steps on shaking legs.

Emily steps forward but Dave catches her elbow. He stops her from moving to Hotch.

He’s not in his right mind. Dave’s only protecting her. Protecting them. Aaron is hardly going to survive today, he doesn’t need to accidentally hurt Emily. He is a live wire and he’ll take them all out in the explosion.

George Foyet arches against his wires and they’re standing right there when his anger boils over and he screams into the nothing. Holding Haley’s body in his arms so delicate and broken. They’re both just broken dolls, their cords cut and the curtain comes tumbling down. One last final blow-- his job really did take everything from.

Jack isn’t enough to save him.

He blows up. It’s not nuclear but it’s unhinged and raw and there’s something about his eyes that makes Emily finally draw the line. He’s hurting but there has to be a line. A place where one of them steps in and says that it’s enough. That he’s got to pull himself together before he sucks them all into the black hole of his chest. And she’s quickly realizing, she’s the only one strong enough to do the job.

She finds him on a bender. He can hardly stand and the light mirth she’d once admired about his quizzical eyebrow raises is gone. The man standing before is a mess and she’s not sure if she hates herself or him more for letting it get this bad. For not finding that line sooner.

“Jesus,” she whispers.

He knows disgust when he sees it. A childhood spent curled into his father’s shoe, cracked ribs, and broken arms, he knows disgust all right. And now, a fully grown man, he just laughs. There’s nothing light about the sound. It’s morbid and twisted in his throat. A hollow sound. She’s disgusted by him.

“You need a shower,” she informs him with a curl of her nose. She steps past him, ignoring the frown she shoots her. She knows that he doesn't want her here but what he wants isn’t really a priority right now. He hasn’t got to tell her. She can see it in his eyes and smell it on his breath. He wants to crawl into a dark hole and die. She’s here to drag his sorry ass out.

Looking around his apartment, the first priority is getting rid of all the bottles. “Where are the trash bags,” she asks, heading to his kitchen. He’s already shaking his head, running his hands through his thick greasy hair. She finds the bags on her own, right where she’d assumed they’d be. Under the sink. “Where’s Jack?”

He falls onto the couch with a huff. “Jessica,” he grunts.

Good, she thinks, for him. Jack doesn’t need to see his father like this. Hell, no one does but… someone has to. At the same time, if Jack were here, Aaron wouldn’t have let himself get this bad.

“He probably misses you,” she says, starting in on tossing his garbage. There’s an astounding lack of food but it’s also not entirely surprising that without one of them hovering over him and forcing him to eat that he hasn’t tried. The word suicidal may not have come out of their mouths but they watch him. They see him. Sometimes you don’t have to speak a truth for it to be true.

And Aaron Hotchner is a coward. They are all. It’s why they haven’t taken his guns and it’s why he hasn’t put one to his mouth.

There are three guns in his home.

Two service weapons that he wouldn’t stain with his own blood. He took a vow and those weapons are not meant for this. It’s a disgrace to the only thing that’s ever made him mean anything.

The third is a gun his father had given him.

He was sixteen.

The words had poured out of his mouth. An aching truth he hadn’t even realized was true until the words were spoken. He did want to kill himself. The abuse was never going to end. He could see no end in sight and his father consumed his every action and thought and even his self-image.

He was tired of his reflection.

His father had grabbed the bottom of his jaw, large fingers digging into his flesh as he’d pulled Hotch’s mouth open. Hotch had shaken, frozen in place, as his father pressed the barrel of his gun to the roof of his mouth. Gunpowder and cold metal.

Sometimes, Hotch can still taste it.

He’d been afraid to die then but now, he longs for it. There is a darkness in his veins, murky and thick, that he needs to spill out. To watch the crimson drip down his flesh so that he can see, so that he can know that beneath this shell he is alive. That there is only a part of his sum that is broken and dead. He is alive.

His ribcage expands with life.

His heart beats with purpose.

But his mind… it has rotted. Desolate and afraid.

His father had beaten him senseless that night but that made it no different than any other night.

And the very gun that had once been pressed between his lips now rests in the safe in his office. Untainted and calling out so wistfully to him. He can hear it now, as Emily calmly collects his empty bottles of alcohol. His throne of glass shattering beneath him. He can always hear it. How simple it would be to get it now. To just end all of this.

“Aaron?”

He looks up suddenly, eyes unfocused and glazed.

“Aaron!”

The bile hits the back of his throat and is thrown out on his hands and knees, expelling the contents of his stomach into the porcelain of the toilet. His head throbs as Emily follows him, turning on the lights. He’s been sitting in the dark for so long, he’d forgotten the sting of the light.

“Just leave me alone,” he grunts, spits falling over his bottom lip as his stomach aches on. Rolling and churning. He’s put nothing in it for the last forty-eight hours other than Scotch, Oxy, and two shitty beers from when he first moved into this shit-stained apartment. He groans as his stomach clenches, leaning his forehead against the cold porcelain.

Emily’s seen enough. She’s tired of this little performance he’s putting on. “No,” she steps to the sink and drenches a rag in the shockingly cold water. Wringing it out only slightly before slapping over the back of his neck. “This bullshit, it ends tonight, do you understand me?”

He grunts as the rag meets his skin, trembling muscles protesting at the temperature difference of his overheated body. Even if he could think of something to say in protest, he’s not sure it would make it past his lips without being accented by more drug-laced regurgitated booze. Besides, he knows she's right. Deep, deep down. Beneath the self-loathing heat and even farther down beneath the frayed parts of him that never survived childhood. He knows. He knows that even if it’s not for him, he has to stop. For the team and his son.

“First,” she whispers kneeling down beside him. “We need to get you sober.” She draws a clean rag over his face, wiping the vomit from his lips. “What have you taken?”

He shakes his head. Can’t meet her eyes. He’s ashamed and he should be.

She reaches out to touch him but he flinches, looking between her hand and her face. As if he’s expecting her to hit him. “Aaron,” she softens her voice. Moving slowly until she’s cupping his cheek. His eyes water, chest hitching as his breathing grows unsteady with the emotions boiling to the surface. “I just want you to get better.”

A tear falls down his cheek and he turns his cheek, trying and failing to hide it from her. He wants to get better.

Tears are falling down his face when he turns his face back to her and pulls in a stuttering breath. He pulls his sleeve up. He shows her the hesitantly made cuts on his forearm. “I-- I don’t…” he pulls away from the hand she reaches out to him with. But when she tries again, he lets her hold his wrist in her hand. Her finger ghosts over the scabs. He hadn’t known what he was doing and he hadn’t liked the blood. He’d just wanted the hurt.

It was too much like Foyet. The knife and the razor and the blood on his white t-shirt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

She shakes her head. No, this is-- this is his fault. These cuts were made by his hand but they never should have let him get so low. They should have done more.

Pulling her eyes from his arm she steadies herself. He isn’t hopeless. He's a fighter and he’s stronger than she is. He’s got more to lose than he realizes.

“I took the oxy,” he admits. “It’s-- It wasn’t enough.” He’s shaking now, coming down from his anger and submitting to the pain. “You need to…” a part of his broken mind screams. It screams to fall silent. That he needs the gun and that he’s just supposed to be distracting her now so that he can follow through with the plan he’s been making for weeks--

The office and the gun. Spinning in the leather-bound chair that Haley had gotten him as a wedding gift and biting the bullet. The letters are written and waiting on his desk. The chamber is full. The gun calls for him.

“There’s a gun,” he whispers. “In my office, you need to-- you have to get it or I’ll…”

She nods her understanding.

He can’t see around the tears pooling in his eyes, “uhm... “ He’s trying to think, what else? What else is left? He couldn’t stomach the thought of slitting his wrist. Never had the nerve to draw a bath and just to sink into warmth… that’s too gentle. He’d needed a bang. A mess and more disgust. More hurt.

And now he can feel the panic of his options being taken away.

“Aaron,” she squeezes his hand. He meets her eyes and feels a fraction of warmth. “Just-- Just--” she wants to tell him to let her in. She wants to tell him that all this is going to pass in time and this awful moment will just be a cruel memory one day. But she’s looking at him and seeing her own reflection. Two people broken by time and unable to trust another human being. She can’t be certain why she does it.

Her mind screams that he’s neither trustworthy nor in the right mind but she wraps her around him and pulls him into a hug. “I love you,” she tells him, hugging him tightly. Feeling his tension and apprehension. Slowly, he lifts his arms and hugs her back. He clings to her. Squeezing her tight but she’s not going anywhere.

He’s vaguely aware of the fabric of her soft cotton shirt getting wet against his face. Her hand comes up and brushes his hair down and he finds that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care that he’s sobbing in the arms of the very woman who was once hired to end his career. He doesn’t care because he feels the pain and for once, he can breathe.

Emily holds him tighter. Neither is speaking. They just cling together in the storm and Emily hopes that she can drag him out of this mess. That he can come back here, to her arms instead of into the bottle. And she’ll get his gun. She’ll throw out all of the alcohol and call Jessica in three or four days when he’s mopped up and dry and tell her that Hotch needs to see Jack.

And maybe one day they’ll think back to this moment and it won’t hurt as much. But for today, for this moment, they just hold one another.


End file.
